Forgive me if this is a silly question but HD channels weren't something that I've particularly paid any attention to previously, but given that it seems a lot of people have cited the Superbowl broadcast as their basis for their television purchases at this time of the year (Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas), I figure this sub might be the better informed source.

NBC will be airing this year's Superbowl, and given that it will be on broadcast TV, do we have any idea at this point in time if the broadcast will be in 4K-quality? Or do we need to be subscribed to a premium channel for that kind of quality?

No. Actually nobody really broadcasts in anything over 720p. 1080p TV's are really only useful for video games and Blue Rays. That's about it. Sure, new age TV's CAN receive 1080p signal, but it might be a while before 1080p broadcasts ever become the norm. 4k is even further off than that.

Only get a 4k TV if you want to hook up your PC to your TV and play Battlefield in the living room or something.

Considering the SB is always on an over the air channel, couldn't the NFL theoretically just work with FOX, NBC, and CBS to let an Internet provider stream it? I don't see cable companies having any influence since those channels are free anyways.

Ah, that's certainly very informative. I appreciate the quality response.

A slight follow-up/clarification though: so as it stands now, are we to assume that when cable states that a channel is in HD (particularly in their slate of channel packages), that the highest resolution on these are just 720 then? Or is there a really difference between broadcast TV and cable TV quality?

HD for TV (cable or broadcast) is 720p. Don't think there is really a difference in quality between broadcast (assume you mean over the air) and cable TV. I recently cut the cord and have an antenna and the signal/quality looks the same to me and my TV tells me its 720p (as it did when I had directTV & dish network).

Actually no - sorry, I moved into my house in 2012 and it had one of those huge antennas like you used to see on roofs in the early 90s in my attic hooked up with a great signal so I decided at that point I could probably get rid of cable/satellite eventually. That was the only part I didn't really need to research.

FWIW I went with a Tivo solution to make the transition easiest on my wife (and remove headaches for myself honestly). Might have overpaid compared to building a HTPC, but feel like the ease of use was worth while.

Well I'm only really paying $67/month for football so it seems like a waste. I guess I'll have to do research on OTA devices. Most everything else I need I can get with a chromecast. I appreciate the reply though.

As long as you get good signal reception where the antenna will be, you can get the same signal quality over a $20 set of rabbit ears as you would with a cable box.

Ever since broadcasters switched over to digital from analog, there's no real difference between the digital signal your antenna brings in vs the one that comes out of your cable box (they're both getting them from the same broadcast tower).

It's handy if you don't want to have cable, or don't want to pay for additional boxes. We have a cable box in the living room and an antenna in our bedroom plus a Roku for MNF via Watch ESPN. We can still watch any NFL game that's not on NFL Network via that setup and it looks the same.

Actually a lot of broadcasts are in 1080i, but it's barely any better, and a 4K TV for gaming would only be worth it if you had a monster of a PC. A normal PC couldn't output 4K with a game on low settings with a constant frame rate. 4K resolution is 4 times as many pixels as a full 1080 screen. 4K broadcasts are still a few years out for US cable providers, and will probably start with smaller ones rather than the largest cable companies. 4K is currently only worth it for movies although some might argue that the 4K up-conversion makes everything look better. Considering the current prices and what you could use it for, a 4K TV isn't worth it in 2014.

Yeah I said 720 because not a lot of people even know what interlaced is and the quality is pretty comparable. Easier for the sake of explanation for me to just say 720 to illustrate the step down from 1080p/why 4K set ups are kind of pointless.

I believe they'll probably do something similar to FOX last year and use 4k cameras, but solely for their ability to shoot a wide frame and crop zoomed sections at a 720p resolution (saves them from having to constantly zoom in and refocus shots). That means even with a 4K TV, the best you can do is upconverted 720P.

I don't believe we'll see it braodcasted in native 4K this year... seems like the broadcast standards are still a ways off. I cannot wait until they start though, I was in Sochi for the opening ceremonies and they were feeding it to 4K TV's around the Olympic Village in 4K, and it was absolutely stunning.

As for the game itself, the only way to enjoy it in 4K is to *upconvert * Fox's 720p broadcast, which any 4K TV will do.

That excerpt from the article kinda stood out. What does this actually mean? That 4K TVs can actually upconvert a 720p broadcast on the fly? I don't have a 4K TV so I'm not really familiar with the tech but it sounds iffy to me.

To the best of my knowledge, upconverting uses an on board processor that basically takes the 720p signal (native 1280x720 lines of resolution) and enlarges it to fill the 4K screen. It can't 'add' resolution to the original signal to make it fit the screen, so it basically enlarges the individual pixels to a size that will keep the same 16x9 format and fill the much higher resolution screen.

Basically, you end up with a picture that looks like 720p on a screen that's capable of many times that amount. It won't look any 'worse' than it originally was, just basically like any other native 720p TV.

It's sort of the same concept as watching a movie on a 1080p TV on cable vs on Blu Ray, the cable version will look like anything else on HD cable (not particularly bad), but that same movie in native 1080p will look worlds better.

One thing to note is that lines of resolution (480, 720, 1080) doesn't tell the full story. Cable, and especially telephone line-based Uverse, still send their signal with 720p+ lines of resolution, but they use a disappointing amount of compression, which makes the picture look like garbage with lots of compression artifacts.

To be true 4k is has to be filmed in 4k, transported in 4k and played on 4k device(s).

Of the 80+ cameras used by the Super Bowl broadcast, 6 have been 4k native for the past few years. As noted above, the transported signal is 1080i/720p, so even 1080p devices are not necessarily showing any of the improved resolution that the Super Bowl cameras provide due to the transport bottleneck.